Exhaust hoods are provided in cooking areas to remove smoke, steam and odors from kitchens. High temperature air exhausted from a cooking area often is laden with grease and other contaminants. It is desirable to remove the grease and other contaminants before the air is released into the atmosphere, so that clean air is exhausted. Further, it is desirable to remove a substantial portion of such contaminants early in the exhaust system, so that only a minimal amount of equipment and ducting near the exhaust system entrance is contaminated and requires frequent cleaning. A variety of different filters, screens and contaminant removal devices are known for kitchen exhaust hoods.
It is known to use fibrous batts of absorbent material to capture contaminant particles from kitchen air stream exhaust flows. Individual pieces or batts of the absorbent material are positioned in the exhaust hood. When the batts become unacceptably contaminated or filled and replacement is required, each batt or filter element is removed and replaced individually. A large kitchen hood, such as those sometimes found in commercial kitchens spanning several cooking locations, can require a plurality of individual fiber batts. To replace each batt requires access along a substantial area of the kitchen hood, which may include access directly over cook tops, griddles, grills and other hot and/or difficult to access locations. Accordingly, replacement of the individual filter batts can be both time consuming and inconvenient.